Tri-Pen Enhances TravelMaster Technology Platform With Online Portal

Corporate travel management firm Tri-Pen Management, which claims to handle about $600 million in annual travel spending for 18 corporations, has launched a consolidated online reporting platform based on its proprietary technology.

The automated platform integrates data from corporate card suppliers and travel management companies via data feeds from global distribution system passenger name records. The data is presented on a consolidated Web platform, which includes dashboards that can be broken down to the individual employee's travel bookings, better enabling travel managers to measure their policy and performance, as well as facilitate hotel requests for proposals, according to Tri-Pen Travel Management president Victoria Wofford.

It integrates "everything into a single application so that everybody in the company is looking at the same data and it's continuous," she said. "There is no such thing as having to analyze the data, ship it over to the hotel RFP company and then do an annual hotel RFP."

While similar technology platforms exist, Tri-Pen TravelMaster Technologies senior vice president of global business development Joe Monaghan said the Tri-Pen technology enables buyers with multiple travel service suppliers to customize and manage their own reporting platforms. "It was from the result of multiple GDSs, multiple travel providers, multiple corporate card programs and having to list the technology for the independent supplier," said Monaghan, who was the 1993 BTN Travel Manager of the Year while at Dr. Pepper/Seven Up Cos. before serving in agency roles at American Express and most recently the former WorldTravel BTI. "If you look at it from a travel manager's perspective," he said, "I want it on one platform and I don't really care who the suppliers are. I need consolidated card data and integrated card information so I can manage across a broad spectrum of suppliers and the technology the suppliers offer is less of an issue."

The internally developed online portal, an enhancement of the TravelMaster technology platform that launched in 2004, is offered on a software and service subscription model.

The Enterprise version is being used by a group of multinational corporations including Halliburton, ON Semiconductor and The W.R. Grace Co., according to Wofford. Monaghan said another multinational corporation is likely to sign an agreement to use the technology in August.